...finally...

I am so glad that I finally had a chance to sit down and finish my last post!!! :)

Life here at our house has been busy!

We are all enjoying a new year! I'm hoping to get some unfinished things done this year!! I have now checked off 3 things from the list! :)

1. Finish the baby blankets for Kate and Eliza...CHECK!!!

Mattie, Aimee and I had grand plans to make Kate and Eliza these cute blankets for when they were born...well, things happened...mostly like a BIG MOVE...and well, Kate is turning 2 in April...so it took us a little while! Mattie and Aimee helped me pick the fabric out way back when. I had all the pieces pinned together, but the project got put on hold when we had to move to Louisiana.

Aimee helped me with the sewing once we finally got going on the project again!! :)

Here is Aimee watching Eliza open her blanket.
Eliza likes it!!! On the back of the duck blanket is pink silky fabric...picked out by Aimee!

Here is Kate inspecting her heart blanket...with the blue sparkly fabric...picked out by Mattie.

Each of the girls got both the duck and the heart blankets! Kate has a hold of both of hers! :)

2. Finish reading "The Return of the Native" by Thomas Hardy...CHECK!!!

This was a book that I was supposed to read my Senior year in HS for my English class. I couldn't quite finish the book by the deadline, I was really close to being done...so my teacher, Mrs Baskin, made me a deal...IF I PROMISED TO FINISH THE BOOK, SHE'D MARK ME DOWN THAT I HAD DONE IT!

This is a picture of Mrs Baskin from my yearbook and the note she wrote to me! :)

I promised Mrs Baskin that I would finish the book. Over the years, I've tried to complete that promise. I don't remember how many times I started the book, more than a few. For years it has been sitting on the bookshelf as a constant reminder of that promise!!!

Around Thanksgiving, I decided that I was tired of that book "hanging over my head" so I pulled it off the shelf and started reading. As I read the first few pages, yellow with age,I was surpised to see how yellow the pages had become. I was a little surprised to find my old book mark still in the book...an old physics flash card...some formula that I've forgotten! :)

Near the end of the book, I found a long lost fortune slip...

Good advice! :)

I finally read the book from cover to cover!!! And I actually liked it!! Is that a sign that I'm getting old??? (Don't answer that!!!)

I was so glad when I finally finished "The Return of the Native!" I've been done for about a week now and I'm still so excited that I actually finally finished!!! YEAH!!!!!! :)

3. Finish my blog entry "F is for..." that I started months ago...CHECK!!! :)

My Sundays have become a lot busier lately now that Edd is bishop. We end up having people over for dinner a couple Sundays a month. Sometimes with advance notice and sometimes with not so advanced notice. :)

My weekday free time has been spent reading "The Return of the Native!" Now that my book is finished, I can sneak in some computer time!! :)

Each morning, I try to remember that each day is a gift! This year I want to try live each day to the fullest! When we have beautiful mornings like this, it helps me be motivated to get moving even though I'm usually still super tired!

F is for...

FROGS & TOADS~

Thomas loves playing with his frog and toad friends! They are his little buddies! As the weather cooled off the toads went off to hibernate, but we still have a few frogs sticking around the house! :) Don't they realize it's "cold" outside???

FREE HAND CHALK DRAWINGS~

Every morning while we waited for the school buses to come, our driveway became a HUGE chalk board for Thomas! We had amazing chalk scenes! This is one of my favorite. Thomas had copied our trees and was working on a rainbow with clouds. We also had numerous jungle scenes, the North Pole with the Polar Express, oceans, anything that Thomas could imagine! When it rained, it all got washed away and we started again. After Thomas started pre-school, the chalk was put away...no more lazy mornings to just draw.

FIRE ANTS~

One Saturday morning, in the beginning of September, after my bike ride, I decided to work in the garden before it got too hot. Unfortunately, my time was cut short by me, unknowingly, standing in a fire ant hill!!! I jumped out of the flower bed, onto the driveway, and kicked my shoes and socks off as fast as I could...TOO LATE!!! Those fiesty fire ants got me really bad, at least on one ankle...23 bites on my right ankle and only 3 on my left. NOT FUN!! :(

Too many fire ant bites = trip to doctor! By Monday, my ankles were really swollen and the bites were getting infected...not good...dumb fire ants!!! After some medicine, I was on the mend. :)

FACES~

Bethany was so excited to finally get her braces off!!! :) She got them off near the end of August. Don't those teeth look nice!! :)

Thomas, on the other hand, had this freaked out look! One of the things at the top of his "to-do" list once the kids went back to school was to go to the zoo and see the dinosaurs!!! Well, the last time we went to see the dinosaurs, he was super freaked and wouldn't let go of my hand.

This time, Thomas was still freaked out, but was brave enough to walk without holding my hand, most of the time! He was a little nervous that this baby T-rex would get him though because there wasn't a fence by him. :)

FAMILY ~

We finally were able to meet ELIZA!!!

My sister, Carolee, and her husband, Tim, came with their daughter, Eliza, to visit us for Labor Day!! :) They live in Jacksonville, FL! We all had fun playing with Eliza and getting to know her! We also got to celebrate Eliza's FIRST birthday with her, a few days early!! :)

FOOTBALL ~

Edd was able to take his girls to one of the Saints' pre-season games!!! They were all super excited!!!!

Edd took the girls to Victory Square before the game started! The football game was pretty exciting too! They all had a great time!! :)

As I drove back across the lake, after dropping the girls off, I realized that the clouds looked more like Autumn clouds...they were long and stretched out instead of the big, fluffy clouds I was used to seeing. I was a little sad to see Summer slipping away. I wasn't quite ready for FALL~

THE DOG DAYS OF SUMMER...

The dog days of summer have come and gone, but they sure were fun!!! Here's some highlights from our summer...

JUNE:

While Bethany was at camp, we went to the Audubon Zoo one night...lots of fun! It was the members only night and they fed the alligators for us...which was the best part of the trip, of course!!!

The trip to the zoo wouldn't be the same without doing our two favorites:

RIDING THE CAROUSEL~

POSING BY THE WILD CREATURES~

Of course when Bethany returned home from GIRLS CAMP, she told us that she'd had a crazy good time! :)

BLUEBERRY PICKING!!!

A couple of weeks later, we joined up with some other families in the ward to do some blueberry picking!

We got there super early so we could beat the heat of the day! Unfortunately, it was already hot and humid when we got started.

At first we had a lot of fun picking!

As the time went by and the buckets filled up it got "DRIPPING HOT!!!" as Thomas called it!!! Even sitting in the shade, it was miserable...

Once everyone had had enough, we turned our buckets in, paid for our blueberries, and headed home.

It's now November...and Summer is LONG GONE. I saw my breath Friday morning while I took the garbage can out to the road and we had frost on the grass Saturday morning...not sure I'm ready for the cold...sometimes I think I'd like to go back to those "DRIPPING HOT" days.

***SORRY FOR THE LACK OF POSTS THE LAST LITTLE WHILE!!!***

Life in our house has been a little busier on Sundays. Tonight, I took advantage of the end of DAY LIGHT SAVINGS!! The kids were so ready for bed before 8!!! I didn't tell them how late it was. Only Aimee figured it out when she looked at her clock and it was only 7:50!! Everyone was sound asleep by 8:45~ a near MIRACLE in our house!! :)

Maybe I can get caught up now! :)

VOLCANO WEEK!!!

Our summer started off with lots of fun!

Here and Mattie, Thomas and Andrew with our volcano!! It was VOLCANO WEEK!! :) One of Thomas' favorite things right now is volcanos!! So we endulged him by making one! The kids had so much fun!!
Working hard to creat the perfect volcano~

Meanwhile, Bethany was off at GIRLS CAMP! She had a great time and was able to make some new friends.

Here are the girls from our ward who went:

Angel, Bethany, Faith, Lexi, Annie, Laura, Aubrey, and Tiffany :)

Lexi and Annie had just barely met everyone!!! Their family moving into the ward!! They'd arrived from Arkansas hours before they were to head off to camp!

Bethany and Annie really hit it off since they are both April girls...Bethany's b-day is on the 18th and Annie's is the 19th!!! :)

Here's Bethany loading up her stuff. She's pretty excited for her adventure! :)

Bethany's violin recital

A few months ago, Bethany's violin teacher, Lauren Miller, held a recital for her students. It was actually way back on June 4th.

This was Bethany's first violin recital! She was a little nervous, but did a great job! This is Bethany warming up with her pianist right before the recital.

Bethany played a Vivaldi concerto. It's been so long now that she can't really remember for sure which one, but she thinks it's the A minor!

The recital was held in a little white church and it had this pretty stain glass window!

Thomas wasn't very excited about getting all dressed up when it wasn't really a church day, but he finally gave in. He started freaking out when I tried to put on of his Sunday shirts on...it was just a polo shirt. He tried to tell me he wasn't going to wear that shirt because it wasn't a church day!!!

We compromised and he got to wear shorts. The other kids weren't that excited about getting dressed up either, but they didin't put up a fight like Thomas. Getting him dressed on Sundays, when he HAS to wear his Sunday clothes is ALWAYS A BATTLE!!! So getting dressed up for the recital was especially hard!

Here is Bethany after she warmed up! :)

Bethany playing the actual recital performance of her piece! She did a great job!!! YEAH!!! :)
After the recital, we got to meet some of Ms Lauren's other students! She has both violin and cello students. Most of them are around Bethany's age, but Ms Lauren does have some really young girls who are around 5 years old! It was really fun to watch them perform their pieces.
I used the video camera to film Bethany performing. I've never put any of our videos on the computer, so I need to read up on that! If I figure it out soon, I will post it!

***ok, it's been almost a month since I started this post. I realized there's more than one way to skin a cat!!! i.e...I haven't located the software disc I need to tranfer files from the camcorder to my computer...the joys of moving...it's somewhere...just got tired of trying to find it so I re-recoreded the recital with my camera!!! :)*** TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES...THE VIDEO WON'T POST SO I'LL HAVE TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO SHARE IT A DIFFERENT WAY! :)

Needless to say Bethany did an awesome job and both her teacher and her parents were very proud of her! :)